Clinton and Gore Clash With N.R.A. Official Over Gun Control

By ROBERT PEAR

Published: March 14, 2000

CLEVELAND, March 13—
A long-running dispute between President Clinton and the National Rifle Association escalated today as Mr. Clinton angrily rejected a suggestion that he tolerated a certain amount of violence and killing to strengthen the case for gun control and to score political points for the Democratic Party.

Mr. Clinton said such suggestions were grotesque and totally without foundation. And he said the comments by a senior executive of the N.R.A. were an example of the ''political smear tactics'' and ''slash and burn'' politics that he deplored.

Vice President Al Gore, the putative Democratic presidential nominee, joined the verbal fray, saying the comments made by the executive revealed ''a kind of sickness at the very heart of the N.R.A.''

The executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, made the comments on Sunday on the ABC News program ''This Week.''

Referring to the president, Mr. LaPierre said: ''I've come to believe that he needs a certain level of violence in this country. He's willing to accept a certain level of killing to further his political agenda and his vice president, too.''

Mr. LaPierre asserted that Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore had political reasons for their adamant insistence on tough gun control legislation.

Mr. LaPierre refused to back away from his comments today, saying on CNN, ''What the president needs to understand and the American people need to understand is people are dying, and this administration won't do anything about it.''

In two speeches here today, Mr. Clinton said officers of the N.R.A. would not dare to make such comments to the parents of schoolchildren who had been killed by gun violence in the last few years.

Mr. Clinton said, ''I'm not going to get in a shouting match'' with the N.R.A. But he said the dispute underlined the ''big stakes'' in this fall's elections. Specifically, he said, the election of more Democrats to Congress could create a safer country by increasing the chances for passage of gun controls.

Polls suggest that gun violence and laws to control it could be a potent issue in this November's elections. A recent opinion survey for ABC and The Washington Post showed that Mr. Gore was more trusted than his Republican rival, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, to deal with gun control, 47 percent to 36 percent.

Mr. Bush said today that he declined to get involved in a fight between the White House and the N.R.A.

''I would hope that we can have an open and honest discussion about gun enforcement without calling names,'' he said. ''There are going to be a lot of emotions involved in the debate. But people need to come together to come up with policies to keep the handguns out of the people who shouldn't have them.''

Speaking to health care workers at a Miami hospital, Mr. Gore said Mr. LaPierre's remarks on Sunday were ''shocking, because anyone who has spent time, as I have, many times, with the families of the victims of gun violence, and felt the heartache, seen the way gun violence tears families apart, couldn't make such a comment.''

He called on Mr. LaPierre to apologize to the nation.

Mr. LaPierre's comments were part of a larger attack on the White House by the rifle association. The group is running television advertisements that feature its president, the actor Charlton Heston, questioning Mr. Clinton's truthfulness over his past assertion that the gun lobby is blocking gun control legislation.

''Mr. Clinton, when what you say is wrong, it's a mistake,'' Mr. Heston says in one advertisement. ''When you know it's wrong, that's a lie.''

In a pointed response in a television interview on Sunday, Mr. Clinton accused the N.R.A. of being a ''ruthlessly brutal'' lobby.

''These crocodile tears, I don't think it will wash with the voters, even with Moses reading the script,'' the president said, alluding to the biblical role played by Mr. Heston in ''The Ten Commandments.''

The White House is pushing Congress to act on stalled gun control legislation before next month's one-year anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School near Denver. But the legislation has been blocked by Congressional Republican leaders who fear that versions of gun control laws already passed in the House and Senate could place too many limits on gun sales.